With four days to go, Gas Powered Games cancels Wildman Kickstarter

It was in mid-January this year that Gas Powered Games and studio head Chris Taylor embarked on a brave new adventure into the unpredictable crowdfunding world of Kickstarter in an effort to ask the community to help fund the team’s next game, Wildman.

After only a week, however, support for the Wildman project faltered and Taylor revealed that a swathe of developers at Gas Powered had been let go due to financial troubles and a string of cancelled projects. Still, however, the Wildman Kickstarter ticked over, albeit very slowly.

Taylor and his team have tried very valiantly to drum up support for Wildman, posting regular updates and videos to give potential backers a look at the game’s development, and Taylor in particular waded into the public sphere to talk about mostly anything even tangentially related to his studio to keep Wildman in gamers’ collective concious.

Everything was on the line for Taylor – if Wildman wasn’t successfully funded, Gas Powered Games would shut up shop.

With four days left to go until the end of the Wildman Kickstarter campaign, however, and a little over $500 000 raised (less than half of what was initially required), Gas Powered Games has cancelled the Kickstarter.

“At this point, it makes sense for us to focus our attention on other ways to keep Gas Powered Games running. Unfortunately, we are unable to share any specifics in public. When we have news to share, we will be posting it on our site.”

“We are profoundly grateful to those of you who backed this project and Gas Powered Games, the update concluded. “Your passion and hard work put us in a position to write this exciting new chapter in the history of GPG.”

You can watch Chris Taylor’s final video update on Wildman at the page, where he alludes to good things to come for Gas Powered Games should everything go well with his ‘discussions’ in the future.

What’s next for Gas Powered Games? What would you like to see from the studio? A new intellectual property or a return to an old franchise, like Dungeon Siege or Supreme Commander?